Throughout the six weeks of the trial of Keith Alan Raniere – that led to his conviction by a jury in less than four hours – the name Allison Mack came up frequently. Hundreds of times in fact.
She was not on trial herself. Neither did she testify at the trial. And she did not attend any of the trial. She was at home in California under home confinement – as part of her bail conditions. She must also wear an ankle monitor.
Stealth photo by the Daily Mail of Allison Mack at her home [actually her parents’ home] in Los Alamitos, California.
She was arrested on April 20, 2018 and almost one year later, the lady pleaded guilty, prior to trial, with a plea deal that included two felonies – racketeering and racketeering conspiracy. The maximum prison sentence for each count is 20 years. There is no minimum. The judge can sentence her to – if he wanted to give her the maximum – 40 years.
He can also give her a sentence that includes no prison time if he wants to.
This is a case where the judge has almost total discretion. However, there are non-binding federal sentencing guidelines and, from what I understand, those sentencing guidelines suggest a sentence in the 3-5 year range for the former stooge of Keith Raniere, his first line DOS slave, an actress who had fame, money and success and threw it all away to be Raniere’s fool.
Unhappily for Mack, she does not appear to be a particularly pleasant person from the testimony at trial. At times she appears to be a victim, true – but she often appears to be an eager co-conspirator in the racketeering and perhaps even in the sex trafficking aspects of this criminal enterprise called Nxivm.
She was fortunate indeed to have made a plea deal that allowed her to avoid sex trafficking charges, which would have come with a mandatory minimum of 15 years in prison.
Since her sentencing is likely to be scheduled soon – most likely she will be sentenced before the end of the year – it might be a good idea for readers to become acquainted with some of the things said about her at trial.
The judge – Nicholas G. Garaufis – heard it all – and he is the one who is going to sentence her.
How much impact the testimony from others about Allison – who was not on trial – will have on the judge and his sentencing decision is anybody’s guess. I can imagine that technically it should not figure into his decision-making process at all because she pleaded guilty and whatever was said about her – negatively – was not something she had the opportunity to rebut or to have her attorneys cross-examine the witnesses making those statements.
Still, Judge Garaufis heard a lot and it might impact, on some level, his opinion of her and hence factor into – however subtly – what sort of sentence he metes out to her.
The trial of Keith Alan Raniere began on May 7, 2019. It began with opening statements by the prosecution and the defense.
The second day saw the first witness on the stand, a woman named Sylvie.
First Mention of Allison Mack
At the trial, the first time we heard about Allison Mack was from Sylvie, a DOS slave – and an employee and friend of Clare Bronfman. Sylvie’s master was Monica Duran. But Sylvie also came into contact with Allison and her slaves.
Monica Duran, an assistant to Clare Bronfman. She became a first line DOS slave and Sylvie became her slave. Both Sylvie and Monica worked for Clare – which suggests that Clare Bronfman may have been more involved in DOS than she let on.
Pam Cafritz had died in November 2016. And Sylvie was assigned to help with the memorial service that Keith and Clare had planned.
The late Pam Cafritz. She purportedly died of renal cancer. But new evidence I am currently reviewing suggests she may have been murdered by Keith Raniere. A weepy Raniere nevertheless staged a memorial service for her several months after she died.
The trial date is May 8.
Sylvie is on the witness stand. She is being examined by the government, by Assistant US Attorney Moira Penza. It is the second day of the trial and Sylvie is the first witness called by the government.
Penza: As part of her [Cafritz’s] memorial service, were there any tasks that came up related to DOS?
Sylvie: Yeah, … I was being paid by Clare Bronfman to help the memorial… I was doing logistical stuff for her because they were arranging a big memorial event…. as part of that there was all these things that they [Keith and Clare] wanted transcribed …. I got the task from Clare because it was Clare who was paying me but it was a lot of work… I would have never got it done in the deadline… [Clare] told me there was some people that I could ask for help….
Q And who did she tell you you could ask for help?
A …. they were girls that were all staying with Allison Mack… Nicole and Jaye …helped, I think India helped and Michele [Hatchette] as well. They were all working on it for me because it had to be done in a really tight time frame, it was like 48 hours or something and there was hours of transcription to get done.
Q Do you know whether they actually did that transcription?
A Yeah, I got most, if not all of the work back…
Q And do you know whether they were paid for that work?
A I don’t believe they were, at least not that I was aware of.
Q And you were paid for work you did on the memorial?
A I was, yeah.
***
So the first mention of Allison Mack at the trial of Keith Alan Raniere – is that a number of girls are living with her. They did some free work of transcribing, among other things, Raniere’s precious words – for Pam Cafritz’s memorial.
The girls who lived with Allison [which we later learn were her slaves] helped Sylvie get this transcription done. It was Sylvie who assigned the work to them. The point of this – which becomes evident later in the trial – is that these DOS women – particularly Allison’s slaves – had to do – were forced in fact to do – free work for Raniere. This is part of the evidence against Raniere of forced labor conspiracy.
Mack evidently is at least tangentially involved since it was her slaves who had to do the free labor, slaves of hers that Allison had collected damning blackmail worthy “collateral’ on. [As we shall see, Nicole who was a slave under Allison would later testify about some of the free work she had to do for Allison, including working for free on Pam Cafritz’s memorial.]
Second Mention of Mack
Sylvie was a DOS member and Raniere had plans for her to be branded. Monica Duran was her slave master and she told Sylvie that someone would arrange for her branding. That turned out to be one Allison’s slaves, Michele Hatchette. It is interesting and further points to Allison’s more vigorous role in DOS that one of her slaves would be making the arrangements for the branding of Monica’s slave. It should also be pointed out here that the woman who was going to do the branding was Dr. Danielle Roberts – who was also a slave of Allison Mack.
Now it becomes more evident as the trial progresses that Allison may have been the most active and efficient of the DOS first line slaves.
Of all the first line slaves who worshiped their glorious and wondrous master [center], Allison Mack was a true first liner – she worked hard for the golden one.
Penza: At some point was your own branding ceremony or your own branding being planned?
Sylvie: Yeah, Monica Duran told me that I would be contacted by another slave that was not her slave that would be arranging my branding.
Q Okay. Who was that?
A I got contacted by Michele [Hatchette]. She set up a private – secret chat with me in Telegram and … tried to arrange the branding with me.
Q At that point, what was your understanding of Michelle’s role in DOS?
A I had a suspicion that she might be in DOS, I thought maybe she was a slave of Allison Mack just because I had seen her spend a lot of time around Allison and also she had been acting in ways that I thought was unusual but seemed similar to things I’d seen … or experienced myself… I had a suspicion that she was in DOS but … we weren’t allowed to talk about it so I didn’t know for sure…. I knew for sure [she was in DOS] …. because she contacted me.
Q Did you have any conversations with Allison Mack about Michele?
A At one point, Allison made a comment …. ‘if you ever have any problems with Michele, just tell me … because I [am] Michele’s coach… in ESP’ …. [I thought] ‘that’s weird’, it didn’t sound right to me, it didn’t feel right.
[As readers know, Sylvie was spared the branding because she read about it on the Frank Report and it caused her to run away from the ceremony. Court Testimony Reveals Frank Report Helped Save Sylvie From Being Branded.
The jury’s second introduction to Mack at trial is somewhat innocuous – that she seems to be Michele’s coach but it sounded weird to Sylvie, who suspected that Michele was in DOS and perhaps was Allison’s slave.
Third Mention of Mack
After the New York Times article came out about the DOS branding – Inside a Secretive Group Where Women Are Branded – an article that credited Frank Report with first breaking the branding story – Keith Raniere wound up leaving the Albany area – for good. He went to Mexico – although evidently, Sylvie did not know that. Allison also wound up in Mexico and was there when the distinguished one was arrested. [He was hiding in a closet, brave lad that he is].
A skinny Allison Mack is captured by Nicki Clyne’s phone camera looking on as the great one is arrested near Puerto Vallarta Mexico on March 26, 2018.
Sad sack Keith Alan Raniere fled to Mexico thinking he could avoid arrest in the USA. When Mexican federal police came to his villa, the brave one hid in the closet.
Penza: Do you know whether the defendant [Raniere] ended up staying in the Albany area?
Sylvie: No, I know at some point he left. I think it was towards the end of that year, maybe November, [2017] … I just knew that he had left the area.
Q Did you know where he went?
A No.
Q Did anyone else leave the area?
A People started spending a lot of time away. So the people I remember were Nicki Clyne and Allison Mack. Clare Bronfman was traveling a lot more. People just seemed to be away a lot and actually, Monica [Duran] left around that time too. She went back home to Mexico, to her family home.
Q At some point did DOS garner national media attention?
A Yes.
Q Do you remember approximately when that was?
A I’m not sure when the New York Times article originally came out [it came out October 17 2017]….
Q At that time, did the defendant release a statement about DOS?
A Yes. A statement went up on the website… and there was a community meeting too.
Q What do you remember about the statement?
A On the website, it said something –[Raniere] … stated that he had no association to the group [DOS] and I remember that I just thought that was cowardly, honestly, because it was a lie.
So, the third mention of Allison is, once again, rather innocuous. That she left Albany and, as we will see, fled to be with her imperial lord, the Vanguard. Indeed, as Frank Report readers know, the first line slaves were planning a group blow job – as part of a commitment ceremony on the august one – where no doubt they would compete to gobble up and slurp up his magical semen. it never came off because the kingly one was arrested.
This is all the testimony from Sylvie about Allison Mack.
Overall, it is not much.
In our next part of this series, we will hear the testimony of Mark Vicente. He has much more to say about Allison. And we get a clearer picture of the actress who became a cult member and a slave to Keith Alan Raniere.
Stay tuned.
